“The End of the Point,” a new novel by writer Elizabeth Graver ’86, has met with much praise since its release this spring. The novel has been featured by New York Times Book Review editor Alida Becker, among other leading book reviews.

Graver, after majoring in English at Wesleyan, went on to get her MFA from Washington University. She is now a professor of English and Creative Writing at Boston College.

Graver’s past fiction has been enriched by its roots in the landscapes of upstate New York and New England, by her lush descriptions of the natural world.

In “The End of the Point,” her fourth novel, she uses that skill to appeal to the nostalgia of anyone with fond memories of escaping to a seaside refuge that has a “salt air rush,” a spot where the pages of books immediately turn limp and cherished rituals (the morning walk, the afternoon swim, the pause to watch the sunset) are punctuated by hours and hours of the freedom to do anything, or nothing. Yet even as she’s drawing us in, Graver is subtly reminding us how much this picture depends on what we choose to see — and not see.

Most of all, though, Graver’s engaging, expansive storytelling allows us to take up residence inside the minds of a host of different characters, watching as they create their own pictures of the world around them, as they invest certain places and people with mythic significance.